The hostility of livery cab customers toward street cabs came to the surface in 1910 when City Council briefly considered requiring livery cabs to display license numbers. The stable owners were loud in their protests.

"The ordinary woman when she wanted a cab to make a call was not going to take one that had a number blazoned all over it," declared Charles Knox.

Some men would not get into a cab with a number on it. If you decided to number all cabs it would ruin the business. Only a few days ago I sent a cab to a lady... with a number on it. It was the only one I had to send or I would not have done it. Sure enough it was sent back.

Livery stable operators gradually buckled under customer pressure. From the late 1890s onward several former street cab owners abandoned this side of the business to focus on livery cab operations: William Jordan, Joseph Moore Benson, Redmond Burke and Charles "Dublin Dan" James. Jordan went so far as to include a note on his invoices: "No carriages kept on stand."